The present technology relates to an image processing device, an image processing method, and a program, and more particularly, to an image processing device, an image processing method, and a program capable of calculating the position or posture of a marker for which an original state is reserved with high accuracy.
Technologies for analyzing a captured image obtained by photographing a known 2-dimensional plane (hereinafter referred to as a “marker”), estimating the position or posture of the marker on the image, and calculating a relative position or posture of the marker relative to a camera have been known.
As application programs using the technologies, application programs estimating a marker image registered in advance in an authentication system from a captured image and substituting the marker image with a separate image (superimposition image) by image combining are assumed.
Specifically, as illustrated in FIG. 1, an example of the technology is a technology for photographing a captured image including a fillip on which the name of a company, “ABC,” is recorded using a camera, estimating the position or direction of a marker included in the captured image, substituting the marker image with a superimposition image such as a graph, and outputting the superimposition image to a monitor.
In order to substitute the marker image with a separate image, it is necessary to accurately detect the position or direction of the marker. When a camera is moved or rotated or when a marker is moved or rotated, it is necessary to track the motion of the camera or the marker, change the position or direction of the substituted image, and combine the superimposition image.
When a video or computer graphics (CG) is assumed to be combined in correspondence with the position or posture of the marker, it is necessary to maintain geometric consistency. For this reason, calculating the position or posture of the marker with high accuracy is an important technology.
In general, the above-mentioned prerequisite can be achieved by installing a sensor, which detects the position or direction of the marker to take a photograph, other than a camera. However, it is difficult to provide such a system at a low cost. For this reason, methods of estimating the position or posture of a marker by performing an image recognition process on a captured image photographed by a camera have been suggested.
As the methods of calculating the position or posture of this marker with high accuracy, there are methods of generating a marker image which is easy to estimate according to a marker recognition method.
For example, a technology for extracting an image feature of a background image in advance, creating a distinguishing feature different from the image feature, and generating a marker image that has the distinguishing feature has been disclosed (for example, see Japanese Patent No. 4868186). According to this technology, it is easy to distinguish the image feature of the background from the image feature of the marker image, and thus it is easy to estimate the position or posture of the marker.